Heritage

I didn't really like this poem.  The meaning was pretty straight forward and it didn't sound very nice either.  It was just one long stanza followed by another shorter stanza.  It was more a paragraph to me; it didn't have the rhythm most poems do.  Althougth the last line of the first stanza did have some good impact.  The repetition of "I cannot...I cannot..." really struck in the feeling of being trapped in his heritage.  I thought it was really interesting how much James Still seemed to hate his heritage, especially using the word heritage.  When I think of that word it seems to have a positive, proud connotation, but his words seem just the opposite.  James Still was a "mountain man"of the Appalachians and I wonder if he was ashamed of that.  But there is a way in his words that he still seems to see beauty.  "...burns its strength into the blistered rock..." "one with the new-born foal,..." "the lumbering ox drawing green beech logs to mill..."  It's almost like he just had a moment of claustrophobia.
Oh and I commented on Jacey's so far Ms White :)